Today we are going to continue the practice of experiencing a presence that is not physical filling the body.
Many spiritual traditions describe a relationship between light and Spirit. The intention for the meditation techniques we will explore today is to experience our body as full of light.
Exercise 1: Sit comfortably and place your attention on the sensations of breathing. Rest your attention there until your breath feels comfortable, and natural. Then expand your awareness and place part of your attention on any memory or imagining of light. Scan various memories or imaginings to find those where the experience of light is associated with feelings of peace, joy, beauty, or love. Allow your attention to have this dual focus, your breath and the experience of light.
Exercise 2: Begin as in exercise 1. Place more of your attention on the experience of light and imagine that the light is melding with your body. It is not so much that the light is a substance which you are trying to fill your body with. It is more that the light has been within your body all along and you are now allowing yourself to recognize that. Feel your breath moving through your body and open to the experience of light being present where ever you feel the breath. Allow the light to take on various colors or shapes or move in various directions. Avoid the temptation to micromanage it.
Exercise 3: This is a continuation of exercise 2. As you experience light moving through your body mentally connect the light with the presence of Spirit. Sometimes short affirmations can help this. One that I like is a prayer that I found in a book by Swami Sivananda Radha. It reads, "I am created by Divine Light. I am sustained by Divine Light. I am protected by Divine Light. I am surrounded by Divine Light." I often add the phrase "I am one with Divine Light" or "I am becoming Divine Light". Repeating this or a similar prayer while imagining the presence of light joining and flowing through the body adds a spiritual dimension to the practice.
As you gain familiarity with exercises 1 and 2 you can move through them quickly and simply practice exercise 3.
It is also important to create a brief version of exercise 3 that you can use throughout the day to remind yourself of the experience of the light of Spirit filling you and surrounding you.
Tuesday, October 28, 2008
Saturday, October 18, 2008
St Jude's Summary 10-14-2008
Last week we talked about feeling the breath and the body moved together. One of the participants commented that practicing this helped her slow down which was nice. Other participants mentioned that remembering to breathe and move together acted as a reminder throughout the day to be aware of the breath and to relax.
This week we are going to expand on that technique. We are going to to use the breath and body awareness and combine that with awareness of a particular quality in order to experience that quality deeply within our mind-body system.
If we were to imagine Spirit within us, that can be a little vague because Spirit is non-conceptual. So we can start by picking a quality that is associated with Spirit and then imagine that quality within us.
Pick one quality and then think about what that quality means and how you would express it in your life. Also use your imagination to imagine how your body would feel and how you would speak and act while you expressed that quality in various situations in your life. After reflecting on the quality, shift your attention to your breath and allow yourself to feel your breath moving through your body. Then expand your awareness to include the thoughts and imaginings of the quality that you picked. Use your imagination to experience the quality flowing through your body with your breath. Imagine having that quality and your breath flowing through your body in various situations that you are likely to encounter. If your mind wanders away from thoughts or imaginings associated with the quality then focus your attention a little more strongly on the breath and then again expand your awareness to include the quality that you want to experience. Practice this technique for 15-20 minutes a day.
During the day you can practice a brief version of this technique by reminding yourself to feel your breath and body and the quality you are playing with moving together.
Here are a couple of hints:
When we think about one quality and reflect on it we often find ourselves thinking of other associated qualities. We get tempted to work on several qualities at once. This can distract us and it is better in general to work with one quality at a time. After working with one quality for a week or two we can then shift our energy to other qualities.
Sometimes we don’t get many thoughts or imaginings about equality that we want to work with. If that happens consistently then the problem may be that we don’t need to develop any more of that quality. Our wise inner self may be wanting us to work with a different quality. So if you consistently have difficulty with one quality than try working with some other qualities first.
Even though this is a meditation technique, thinking is an important when you practice. It is sometimes difficult to visualize or imagne a quality and deliberately thinking about the quality and how to express it can make it more real for us.
This week we are going to expand on that technique. We are going to to use the breath and body awareness and combine that with awareness of a particular quality in order to experience that quality deeply within our mind-body system.
If we were to imagine Spirit within us, that can be a little vague because Spirit is non-conceptual. So we can start by picking a quality that is associated with Spirit and then imagine that quality within us.
Pick one quality and then think about what that quality means and how you would express it in your life. Also use your imagination to imagine how your body would feel and how you would speak and act while you expressed that quality in various situations in your life. After reflecting on the quality, shift your attention to your breath and allow yourself to feel your breath moving through your body. Then expand your awareness to include the thoughts and imaginings of the quality that you picked. Use your imagination to experience the quality flowing through your body with your breath. Imagine having that quality and your breath flowing through your body in various situations that you are likely to encounter. If your mind wanders away from thoughts or imaginings associated with the quality then focus your attention a little more strongly on the breath and then again expand your awareness to include the quality that you want to experience. Practice this technique for 15-20 minutes a day.
During the day you can practice a brief version of this technique by reminding yourself to feel your breath and body and the quality you are playing with moving together.
Here are a couple of hints:
When we think about one quality and reflect on it we often find ourselves thinking of other associated qualities. We get tempted to work on several qualities at once. This can distract us and it is better in general to work with one quality at a time. After working with one quality for a week or two we can then shift our energy to other qualities.
Sometimes we don’t get many thoughts or imaginings about equality that we want to work with. If that happens consistently then the problem may be that we don’t need to develop any more of that quality. Our wise inner self may be wanting us to work with a different quality. So if you consistently have difficulty with one quality than try working with some other qualities first.
Even though this is a meditation technique, thinking is an important when you practice. It is sometimes difficult to visualize or imagne a quality and deliberately thinking about the quality and how to express it can make it more real for us.
Monday, October 13, 2008
St Jude's Summary 10-6-2008
Last week we ended with the technique of bringing awareness to physical sensations and placing attention on the change in sensations throughout the body that were associated with the breath.
We are going to extend this technique of sensing the breath throughout the body by associating breath with movement.
Start by making a simple movement, lifting one arm up and lowering it. Then couple that movement to the breath. Inhale as you lift your arm and exhale as you lower it. Feel for sensations of breathing that flow into your arm as it moves. After a few repetitions pause and reflect on the experience.
Then reverse the movement and breath by inhaling as you lower your arm and exhaling as you raise it. Notice the difference between this and the last technique.
Now play around with some other movements. Use the other arm or both arms. Extend an arm as you exhale and draw it in as you inhale. As you move and breathe feel as if the breath is flowing through your limbs as you move.
When we go about our day and things happen that cause frustration or stress we often respond by restricting our breath. It is like our energy flow gets a kink in it. Our movement also becomes kinked and muscles tighten and lock up. If we make a habit of having our breath and movement flow together then we can avoid this kinking or tightening, or at least loosen it up after it happens.
Imagine a situation in which you might feel tense or frustrated. Then imagine moving through that situation flowing with your breath. Notice any changes in how you might have responded to the situation as you do this.
Play with this idea of coupling movement with breath and feeling as if the breath and body are moving together.
http://drjoetuesdaymeditation.blogspot.com/
We are going to extend this technique of sensing the breath throughout the body by associating breath with movement.
Start by making a simple movement, lifting one arm up and lowering it. Then couple that movement to the breath. Inhale as you lift your arm and exhale as you lower it. Feel for sensations of breathing that flow into your arm as it moves. After a few repetitions pause and reflect on the experience.
Then reverse the movement and breath by inhaling as you lower your arm and exhaling as you raise it. Notice the difference between this and the last technique.
Now play around with some other movements. Use the other arm or both arms. Extend an arm as you exhale and draw it in as you inhale. As you move and breathe feel as if the breath is flowing through your limbs as you move.
When we go about our day and things happen that cause frustration or stress we often respond by restricting our breath. It is like our energy flow gets a kink in it. Our movement also becomes kinked and muscles tighten and lock up. If we make a habit of having our breath and movement flow together then we can avoid this kinking or tightening, or at least loosen it up after it happens.
Imagine a situation in which you might feel tense or frustrated. Then imagine moving through that situation flowing with your breath. Notice any changes in how you might have responded to the situation as you do this.
Play with this idea of coupling movement with breath and feeling as if the breath and body are moving together.
http://drjoetuesdaymeditation.blogspot.com/
Sunday, October 5, 2008
Class Summary 9-30-2008
A couple of people mentioned techniques that had been introduced previously that helped them get to sleep so lets review those.
The first application was one that I had used myself when having some difficulty falling asleep after waking up in the middle of the night. I was restless and somewhat uncomfortable. I usually advise people not to toss and turn in bed, but rather to get up out of bed and do something soothing that preferably does not involve turning on a light, TV, or computer. However on this occasion I did not feel well and did not want to get out of bed. The usual thoughts were running through my mind, thoughts like "I need to get to sleep," "it's going to be brutal tomorrow if I don't get to sleep tonight," and other thoughts like that. Instead of paying attention to the thoughts and arguing with them or getting stressed out by them, I shifted my awareness to physical sensations. I then focused my attention on any sensations of warmth and comfort that I could find. While there were certainly other sensations that were not comfortable, I was able to find enough sensations of warmth and comfort to keep my attention focused on those. As I did that I felt the sensations of warmth and comfort increasing or maybe I was simply getting absorbed in them and other sensations were fading away. In any case I kept feeling warmer and more comfortable until I woke up in the morning feeling rested.
This is an application of meditation in the following way. In meditation we train our mind to become conscious of various fields of awareness. In this case I deliberately became more conscious of physical sensations and deliberately less conscious of thoughts. My field of awareness was more my physical body and less my thinking mind.
In meditation we also train our mind to apply attention by picking a center of attention and varying the range of attention around the center. In this case the center of my attention was sensations of warmth and comfort and I focused on those, reducing the breadth of my attention to those sensations. I did not try to fight off other sensations or fight off thoughts because that would have shifted my attention to sensations and thoughts that would not have helped me get to sleep. Instead I simply focused more and more on sensations of warmth and comfort. I figured that even if I didn't fall asleep I would at least have a long period of resting warm and comfortably and that was better than tossing and turning. As it turned out I fell asleep fairly quickly.
Sometimes thoughts are too intense to shift awareness and attention from them. Two techniques for dealing with such thoughts are as follows. The first is to be used for thoughts that are creative or intelligent or contain important new ideas. If such thoughts are keeping you awake in the middle of the night then write them down with the intention of reviewing them when you wake up. Then do something to relax your body and go back to bed.
The second technique is to be used for ruminating thoughts that are not wise or creative but rather associated with distressing emotions such as anger, bitterness, or sadness. In this case allow the thoughts to flow out of your mind and onto paper writing them down in a stream of consciousness manner. Your intention in this technique is to purge the thoughts onto paper with the plan of throwing them away without looking at them. This is a cathartic technique and rereading the material you write would simply be like re-ingesting the toxic emotions that you have purged. As you write do not worry about grammar or punctuation or spelling. Just allow the pen to move. After you feel like you have purged the repetitive thoughts from your head then do something that is physically soothing and go back to bed. Remember to destroy the material you wrote.
A couple of weeks ago we went over a number of techniques which involved bringing attention to the breath along with either thoughts or imagined experiences. For the last technique tonight I would like to go over another breathing technique, this time maintaining the field of awareness mostly on the physical experience of breathing but extending the range of attention to include the whole body.
Start by bringing attention to the physical sensations of breathing wherever you feel them most easily. Then extend the range of your attention to other sensations of breathing which are less easily felt. Continue to become more and more aware of subtle sensations associated with breathing that are occurring elsewhere in your body. Extend the range of your attention to include your whole physical body, feeling for sensations associated with breathing all the way out to the tips of the toes, the tips of fingers, and the top of the head. If you wonder whether you are imagining these sensations then notice that wondering is a thinking process and bring your awareness back to your physical body and place attention on the sensations associated with breathing.
There is no need to try and imagine or force certain types of sensations to occur. Simply be aware of physical sensations and pay attention to those physical sensations associated with breathing, feeling especially for sensations in parts of the body which are not usually associated with the breathing process. If you're having any difficulty with the technique then simply focus your attention more on sensations associated with breathing that you can feel easily.
With practice we can feel as if our breath is flowing through our whole body. If we add a thought or imagined experience to the breath, like we did two weeks ago, then this technique helps us experience the thought or imagined experience more extensively throughout our whole body.
The first application was one that I had used myself when having some difficulty falling asleep after waking up in the middle of the night. I was restless and somewhat uncomfortable. I usually advise people not to toss and turn in bed, but rather to get up out of bed and do something soothing that preferably does not involve turning on a light, TV, or computer. However on this occasion I did not feel well and did not want to get out of bed. The usual thoughts were running through my mind, thoughts like "I need to get to sleep," "it's going to be brutal tomorrow if I don't get to sleep tonight," and other thoughts like that. Instead of paying attention to the thoughts and arguing with them or getting stressed out by them, I shifted my awareness to physical sensations. I then focused my attention on any sensations of warmth and comfort that I could find. While there were certainly other sensations that were not comfortable, I was able to find enough sensations of warmth and comfort to keep my attention focused on those. As I did that I felt the sensations of warmth and comfort increasing or maybe I was simply getting absorbed in them and other sensations were fading away. In any case I kept feeling warmer and more comfortable until I woke up in the morning feeling rested.
This is an application of meditation in the following way. In meditation we train our mind to become conscious of various fields of awareness. In this case I deliberately became more conscious of physical sensations and deliberately less conscious of thoughts. My field of awareness was more my physical body and less my thinking mind.
In meditation we also train our mind to apply attention by picking a center of attention and varying the range of attention around the center. In this case the center of my attention was sensations of warmth and comfort and I focused on those, reducing the breadth of my attention to those sensations. I did not try to fight off other sensations or fight off thoughts because that would have shifted my attention to sensations and thoughts that would not have helped me get to sleep. Instead I simply focused more and more on sensations of warmth and comfort. I figured that even if I didn't fall asleep I would at least have a long period of resting warm and comfortably and that was better than tossing and turning. As it turned out I fell asleep fairly quickly.
Sometimes thoughts are too intense to shift awareness and attention from them. Two techniques for dealing with such thoughts are as follows. The first is to be used for thoughts that are creative or intelligent or contain important new ideas. If such thoughts are keeping you awake in the middle of the night then write them down with the intention of reviewing them when you wake up. Then do something to relax your body and go back to bed.
The second technique is to be used for ruminating thoughts that are not wise or creative but rather associated with distressing emotions such as anger, bitterness, or sadness. In this case allow the thoughts to flow out of your mind and onto paper writing them down in a stream of consciousness manner. Your intention in this technique is to purge the thoughts onto paper with the plan of throwing them away without looking at them. This is a cathartic technique and rereading the material you write would simply be like re-ingesting the toxic emotions that you have purged. As you write do not worry about grammar or punctuation or spelling. Just allow the pen to move. After you feel like you have purged the repetitive thoughts from your head then do something that is physically soothing and go back to bed. Remember to destroy the material you wrote.
A couple of weeks ago we went over a number of techniques which involved bringing attention to the breath along with either thoughts or imagined experiences. For the last technique tonight I would like to go over another breathing technique, this time maintaining the field of awareness mostly on the physical experience of breathing but extending the range of attention to include the whole body.
Start by bringing attention to the physical sensations of breathing wherever you feel them most easily. Then extend the range of your attention to other sensations of breathing which are less easily felt. Continue to become more and more aware of subtle sensations associated with breathing that are occurring elsewhere in your body. Extend the range of your attention to include your whole physical body, feeling for sensations associated with breathing all the way out to the tips of the toes, the tips of fingers, and the top of the head. If you wonder whether you are imagining these sensations then notice that wondering is a thinking process and bring your awareness back to your physical body and place attention on the sensations associated with breathing.
There is no need to try and imagine or force certain types of sensations to occur. Simply be aware of physical sensations and pay attention to those physical sensations associated with breathing, feeling especially for sensations in parts of the body which are not usually associated with the breathing process. If you're having any difficulty with the technique then simply focus your attention more on sensations associated with breathing that you can feel easily.
With practice we can feel as if our breath is flowing through our whole body. If we add a thought or imagined experience to the breath, like we did two weeks ago, then this technique helps us experience the thought or imagined experience more extensively throughout our whole body.
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